Trial reportJournal of cerebral blood flow and metabolism : official journal of the International Society of Cerebral Blood Flow and Metabolism2015
Hippocampal structure, metabolism, and inflammatory response after a 6-week intense aerobic exercise in healthy young adults: a controlled trial.
Trial report in Journal of cerebral blood flow and metabolism : official journal of the International Society of Cerebral Blood Flow and Metabolism, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 45 papers, 4 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
45 citing papers in PubMed, 4 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 68 citations in OpenAlex.
- Effects of different physical activities on brain-derived neurotrophic factor: A systematic review and bayesian network meta-analysis.Frontiers in aging neuroscience · 2022Pooled it
- Exercise interventions preserve hippocampal volume: A meta-analysis.Hippocampus · 2021Pooled it
- The Effect of Endurance Training on Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor and Inflammatory Markers in Healthy People and Parkinson's Disease. A Narrative Review.Frontiers in physiology · 2020Pooled it
- Neural correlates of exercise training in individuals with schizophrenia and in healthy individuals: A systematic review.NeuroImage. Clinical · 2018Pooled it
- Long-Term Effects of a 5-Year Randomized Controlled Exercise Trial on Brain Volumes and Cognitive Function in Older Adults: A 4-Year Post-Intervention Follow-Up Study.Sports medicine (Auckland, N.Z.) · 2026Trial
- Hippocampal subfield plasticity is associated with improved spatial memory.Communications biology · 2024Trial
- Hippocampal neurochemicals are associated with exercise group and intensity, psychological health, and general cognition in older adults.GeroScience · 2023Trial
- Effect of high-intensity interval training on hippocampal metabolism in older adolescents.Psychophysiology · 2022Trial
- Effect of 5 Years of Exercise Intervention at Different Intensities on Brain Structure in Older Adults from the General Population: A Generation 100 Substudy.Clinical interventions in aging · 2021Trial
- Improving fitness increases dentate gyrus/CA3 volume in the hippocampal head and enhances memory in young adults.Hippocampus · 2020Trial
- Aerobic Exercise Training and Inducible Inflammation: Results of a Randomized Controlled Trial in Healthy, Young Adults.Journal of the American Heart Association · 2018Trial
- Effects of aerobic exercise on brain metabolism and grey matter volume in older adults: results of the randomised controlled SMART trial.Translational psychiatry · 2017Trial
- Polygenic risk has an impact on the structural plasticity of hippocampal subfields during aerobic exercise combined with cognitive remediation in multi-episode schizophrenia.Translational psychiatry · 2017Trial
- Optimizing exercise for brain health: cortical activation and connectivity across different exercise modalities.Brain structure & function · 2026Article
- Effects of Exercise on Cognitive Function in People with Intellectual Disabilities: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Randomized Controlled Trials.Brain sciences · 2025Review
- Swimming Training Prevents Stress-Induced Spatial Memory Impairment by Reducing Neurodegenerative Changes in Hippocampus.Biochemistry research international · 2025Article
- Exercise as a multitarget therapy: modulating myokines, neurotrophins, and inflammation in Parkinson's disease.Frontiers in aging neuroscience · 2025Review
- Myokines May Be the Answer to the Beneficial Immunomodulation of Tailored Exercise-A Narrative Review.Biomolecules · 2024Review
- Article
- Hippocampal Subfield Volumes in Amateur Marathon Runners.Medicine and science in sports and exercise · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
12 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Interventional studies suggest that changes in physical fitness affect brain function and structure. We studied the influence of high intensity physical exercise on hippocampal volume and metabolism in 17 young healthy male adults during a 6-week exercise program compared with matched controls. We further aimed to relate these changes to hypothesized changes in exercised-induced brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), interleukin-6 (IL-6), and tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-α). We show profound improvement of physical fitness in most subjects and a positive correlation between the degree of fitness improvement and increased BDNF levels. We unexpectedly observed an average volume decrease of about 2%, which was restricted to right hippocampal subfields CA2/3, subiculum, and dentate gyrus and which correlated with fitness improvement and increased BDNF levels negatively. This result indicates that mainly those subjects who did not benefit from the exercise program show decreased hippocampal volume, reduced BDNF levels, and increased TNF-α concentrations. While spectroscopy results do not indicate any neuronal loss (unchanged N-acetylaspartate levels) decreased glutamate-glutamine levels were observed in the right anterior hippocampus in the exercise group only. Responder characteristics need to be studied in more detail. Our results point to an important role of the inflammatory response after exercise on changes in hippocampal structure.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.